The seedbanks have several reasons to push feminized seeds....firstly being they cost the buyer more therefore there is a larger cash flow and more profit for the breeder or bank....secondly, they are in the business of selling SEEDS, not cannabis and if every Tom Dick and Harry were out there making (and trading, selling) their own seeds, these businesses would soon be out of business. These seedbanks are not the only places capable of throwing together good genetics...most of today's seed banks were started by single individuals who got very good at cross breeding techniques and now they are getting very good at the BUSINESS of keeping these seeds within their control. Yes, it is "nice" to take away some "worry" about whether a male plant will pop up into your grow rooms and "ruin" your girls...but wouldn't it be nice to only have to pay these high prices ONCE instead of every time you want to grow some decent smoke? I say Regular all day...and store up for the future cause if these breeders get their way, their business model will have you begging for seed at their prices for generations to come.
I totally agree with you as far as the seedbanks needing to protect their markets and potential financial security. That is just good business sense and we all would do the same thing if we were in the business. You and I would be right there doing the same marketing.
The thing is that I like to collect my own seeds (vegetables, flowers, trees) so I am going to be doing my own breeding as well. Right now I am just starting so I am buying seeds, but my buying is for the purposes of collecting good genes to use in my own breeding later. Get a few nice strains that are popular. A few that are used in the creation of those popular strains. And then collect up some of the pure Landrace strains from different parts of the world (Asia, Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc). I know I can learn to do this fairly well and create stuff that I want to have personally. To do it as well as I can I want to have all the skills possible. Making FEM seeds is one of those skills that I want to have in my toolkit. I am spending money now so that I don't need to later.
I haven't read anything yet that has made me believe that FEM breeding increases the chances for hermaphrodites in a strain. The examples I have read about sound like it was already there as a tendency (vulnerability to stress responses) in the regular strain before it was Femmed. I actually am more inclined to believe that the rates are dropping since the breeders are doing more stress testing of the lines they are working on. It is in their best interest to produce strains that are less likely to Herm. They will sell more seeds if they can say they will not Herm under normal growing conditions. As long as you are using stable strains that have been stress tested during their development you should have very little risk of "creating" a FEM version that is going to Herm.
I will not be beholden to any seedbanks for long, but I wont begrudge them their need to make money.
Just to be clear I intend to be using and producing regular and FEM seeds for my own use. Regular for variety of genepool and FEM for personal stash grows. Males are good and necessary for long term breeding, but feminized seeds have their place as well. My personal opinion anyway.
thanx for any help in advance!
